u6 ARABIA INFELIX
is. So he plods on in his old-fashioned way, with an occasional growl at the powers that be, and, finding his market remote and uncertain, confines himself to meeting local requirements. This means under-production, which brings its own penalty, for any marked scarcity of rain in the agricultural districts entails a general famine, as the people are living from hand to mouth. Centuries of strife, past taxation and present commercial depression, have all tended to establish this procedure, which has become a serious drawback, impairing the resources of the vilayet.
Yamen is fertile enough. Her husbandmen sow sparingly, with Arab thrift, and reap a generous harvest. Durra yields a crop of 140 fold, and in the Tihama, where there are three crops from one sowing, even 400 fold, though this is a maximum.
Wheat yields fifty-fold in the highlands of Yamen, and on the rich irrigation lands of Bagdad only twenty-fold.
Yet with all this prodigality of nature there is not a flour-mill in Yamen, except two small windmills at Menakha, built by the Turks, and used very seldom for grinding soldiers' rations of corn. The vilayet has not got beyond the hand-quern.
And this is the country that imports more than ;£ 100,000 worth of foodstuffs during a year of plenty, and more than double that amount in a year of famine.1
Yet, during the Italian blockade of Yamen, her inhabitants managed fairly well on their own resources, for farmers realized that the market was in their hands, and rose to the occasion, as did also the Ottoman authorities.
1 Consular trade report.